EDITORS RESPONSE:
We understand Geoff’s outrage about this issue. We'd like to put our point of view as well.
Queensland and Commonwealth law makes Geoff’s ejaculating penis very definitely illegal. The Union as Publishers of Semper and we ourselves as Editors could most definitely be prosecuted under both laws, have all our computers confiscated, Semper shut down, and our good selves potentially thrown in the slammer. Nice to know you live in a free country, isn’t it?
We told the Union President and Union Secretary that we were happy to publish and be damned. We wanted to fight this issue out in the courts. We were willing to have been put in the dock to defend your freedom of speech. It kind of appealed to our more noble (though sensationalist) instincts … swanning visions of Richard Neville’s Oz trials came to mind …
But that was not to be. As Union Secretary Matt Collins told us, "I’m not going to be your Larry Flynt." Such a flippant comment from next year’s Semper Editor fills us with concern about your paper. Firstly, free speech is just that: the freedom to communicate regardless of the content of that communication. Secondly, and with (declining) respect Matt, if you can’t see the difference between Geoff Parkes’ Fuct and Fiction (which you hadn’t actually read) and what Larry Flynt published, then maybe you’re not such an "intelligent little student" after all. Rather than Larry Flynt, we suggest Matt might consider the more enlightened figure of Voltaire, who famously remarked that though he disagreed with others’ points of view, he would defend to the death their right to say them.
Look. None of us want to see Sarah McBratney prosecuted
because the Government decided to make it illegal for you to
make up your own mind about what you want to watch and
read. We can also understand the Union’s reluctance to
embroil itself in a costly legal defence. We happen to think
Sarah McBratney is in fact a principled person, and we’re
sure she believes in free speech. What we were saddened by
is the apparent lack of any real desire of the Union to fight
this issue on your behalf. Far from defending to the death
UQ students’ right to free speech, your Union seems
unwilling to defend it even to the fairly mild risk of
prosecution and court costs. It seems it will be some time
before anyone in Queensland is brave enough to challenge
what is by any standards a stupid law. Conservative times
indeed.